WE SHOW our age, it seems, by the Dr Who we best remember. Oh dear. William Hartnell, the very first Timelord back in 1963, is my Dr Who and I know nothing at all of the intervening lot as I discovered better things to do on Saturday evenings.

At the other extreme, a 19-year-old I know had never seen any of them, being too young.

But both of us, though not together, rearranged Easter Saturday evening so that we could watch the first episode of the new series. I don't know about her, but my only behind-the-sofa moment came before anything actually happened.

There was Rose (and I apologise to Billie Piper for doubting she'd "do" in the part) in an apparently deserted warehouse and we just knew something would happen. I hate those build-ups. I think it comes of watching Midsomer Murders with someone who invariably tells the characters, at such moments: "Listen to the music, you twit."

But once it got going, what improbable fun it all was, with Christopher Ecclestone as a deliciously sardonic Doctor and the chemistry between him and Rose fizzing like liver salts. No wonder she chose him and the trusty, if slightly stockier than before, Tardis over the wimpish Mickey (Noel Clarke, and I couldn't handle the change from the cheeky chancer Wyman of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet). He deserved that carnivorous wheelie bin.

But what have they done to the inside of poor old Tardis? It looks like one of those 3-D models of blood vessels, strewn with octopus's suckers.

And, if that heaving dollop of suntanned porridge lurking under the London Eye brought plastic to life, I'm puzzled by the mobile shop window mannequins as I thought they were made from a sort of plaster stuff. And again, plastic is so ubiquitous, why only the dummies? Surely Rose's mum's mobile phone would have folded itself up to bite her ear, if nothing else.

Oh don't nitpick. That's nothing compared with the motley array of extra-terrestrials assembling to discuss the end of the world in tomorrow's episode.

Will I watch it? Of course, and in episode three they're going back in time to Victorian Wales - it was always travelling backwards in time that I preferred with that first Dr Who. With this new one, I can't wait. Move over William Harntnell, I think you've been supplanted in my affections.